Playwright: Joe DePietro ( book ) , many other ( music & lyrics )
At: Cadillac Palace Theatre
Phone: ( 312 ) 902-1400; $19.55-$82
Runs through: Jan. 23
A great deal of skill has gone into giving Broadway-bound All Shook Up the feel of an unsophisticated piece of story-telling. Studiously avoiding deep characters or complex motivations, it's a love-at-first-sight show in which passions turn on dimes accompanied by exuberant outbursts of song.
'The course of true love never did run smooth,' Shakespeare wrote in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and author Joe DePietro takes to heart this classical dictum. The real sophistication of the show ( aside from considerable design and technical wizardry ) is that its twisted plot derives almost entirely from Shakespeare's romantic comedies, filled with cross-dressers, genderfuck, mistaken identities and unrequited love. Reaching even deeper into classical mythology, DePietro's hero is Orpheus, the mortal whose gift of song surpassed even the gods. Here he's Chad, the guitar-slinging roustabout who lights up juke boxes with a touch and lights up women with a look and swivel hips. When he hits a repressed 1955 small town, he soon has everyone dancing, loving and wearing blue suede shoes.
Blue suede shoes? Well, every song in All Shook Up is one that Elvis Presley sang. The show isn't about Elvis, and he's not a character in it, but Chad comes pretty close. It's like an Elvis movie with pinches of Grease, Footloose and The Wild One thrown in for seasoning. Indeed, the 'Jailhouse Rock' production number pays direct homage to that early Elvis film.
Most of the songs are familiar but used in new and clever ways: a diva version of 'There's Always Me,' a chorus of nuns singing 'Devil in Disguise,' love-at-first-sight repeatedly proclaimed with 'One Night With You' and 'I Don't Want To' as a reluctant acknowledgment of gay love.
The strong musical ensemble is headlined by Cheyenne Jackson as a picture-perfect Chad ( tall, dark, handsome ) with great baritone pipes, and lithe Jenn Gambatese as his teen-aged love interest, Natalie. Jonathan Hadary brings deadpan comic flair to Natalie's father, who falls in love with the local bar owner ( the diva role ) , played by Sharon Wilkins. Outstanding in support are wiry Mark Price of diminutive looks and belting tenor voice, Leah Hocking as the intellectual blonde bombshell he hooks, and Curtis Holbrook and Nikki M. James as a puppy love couple.
Unlike some Broadway-bound musicals, All Shook Up never feels too pumped up, although director Christopher Ashley and choreographer Ken Roberson ( using a 1950s dance vocabulary with Fosse flourishes ) keep it energetically bubbling. It's an entertainment vehicle that never takes itself too seriously, and only brushes improbable 1950s reality by condoning gay love and interracial romance. Still, at moments it needs a little more soul and depth, for instance a good father-daughter number. Appropriate tunes must lurk somewhere in the Presley song book.